Existing techniques for data synchronization between desktop machines and mobile devices are cumbersome and time consuming. Typically, these techniques involve the laborious process of connecting the mobile device to the desktop computer with a universal serial bus (“USB”) cable, selecting the files to transfer, and manually dragging and dropping the selected files to the mobile device. The user must then keep the mobile device connected to the desktop computer, and wait while the transfer completes. Media files tend to be quite large, so the transfer-time can be extensive, especially where a large number of files has been selected.
Furthermore, the USB based transfer does not properly transform files into a format best suited for use on a given mobile device. A desktop computer can generally process and display images and video of a much higher quality than that supported by a mobile device. Higher quality media files are larger and require more computing power to process. Copying large files that cannot be fully supported by the mobile device unnecessarily lengthens the copying time, and wastes storage and processing resources of the mobile device. For example, suppose a user transfers a folder of 6+ megapixel photos and a high definition quality video to a mobile device. Although these high quality formats are appropriate for the desktop environment, the mobile device is not capable of displaying such high resolutions, and thus must display lower quality versions of the images. Thus, the copying of the 6+ megapixel photos and the high definition quality video is a poor use of the available computing resources.
It would be desirable to be able to automatically, wirelessly synchronize files between computing devices, in the formats appropriate for each device.